Ganesh HS ·
An e-commerce business took on three hundred temporary staff over two weeks for its peak, tripling the warehouse headcount. Onboarding was done in batches on the floor, the safety induction was compressed to fit, and by week two the operation was running. In week two a temporary associate was injured by a powered truck in an aisle that should have been pedestrian-only. The investigation found he had been inducted, in a group of forty, in a session that had covered aisle rules in a slide. It also found that the business had no record of which of the three hundred had attended which session, and that a third of the temporary intake had already left.
Peak is the whole HR year for an e-commerce operation compressed into six weeks, at three times the headcount, with a majority who joined last month. Everything that is loose the rest of the year breaks then, and the breaks are expensive.
DOCUMENTS captured at scale, before the first shift, through
a link - not photographed on the floor
SAFETY induction before floor access, no exceptions,
recorded per person, not per session
ROLE compressed but not skipped; buddy on first shift
CATEGORY temporary, agency, permanent - held distinctly
from day one, because they exit differently
ACTIVATION shift, system access and payroll, same day
The per-person safety record is the line the
investigation in the opening could not find.The compression is unavoidable; the omissions are not. A safety induction delivered to forty people in a slide session is a session, not an induction, and without a per-person record it cannot be shown to have happened at all. The fix is not longer sessions. It is a short, specific induction — the aisle rules, the equipment they will touch, the escalation route — delivered before floor access, recorded against each name, with the powered-equipment authorisation held separately for the few who have it. The employee onboarding process at peak is a production line, and it needs a production line's record-keeping.
A third of the intake leaving inside the peak is expensive — each replacement is another induction, another ramp — and it is usually treated as the nature of temporary work. Tracked daily by shift and by supervisor, first-week attrition tells a more specific story: it clusters. One shift, or one supervisor, loses far more than the others on the same pay in the same building. That is not the nature of temporary work. It is a roster that was not published, a break that was not given, a transport that did not run at shift change, or a supervisor who was never briefed on how to manage people who started yesterday. All of those are fixable inside the season, and daily tracking is what makes them visible while there is still a season to fix.
A spreadsheet is enough. The cluster appears within a week.
Temporary staff have other lives and other options. A roster published the night before is a resignation letter.
The associate who cannot get home at two in the morning does not come back at two the next afternoon.
Most peak supervisors are permanent associates promoted for six weeks. They have never managed anyone, and the people they manage started yesterday.
A large share of the peak intake typically comes through agencies, and the contract says the agency employs them. For payroll and exit, that is true and the process should route through the agency. For safety, escalation and the standard of induction, the business operating the warehouse is responsible for everyone on its floor, whatever the paperwork says — and an incident involving an agency worker in your aisle is your incident. The practical rule is that agency staff are inducted to the same standard, recorded in the same per-person register, covered by the same escalation route, and included in the daily attrition tracking, while their employment is administered through the agency. Confusing those two things — treating agency staff as the agency's problem for safety because they are the agency's for payroll — is how the opening story happens.
The warehouse has to come back down, and how that is handled decides next year. Release is processed in batches to a plan, final settlement is timed to the release date rather than the month end, scanner and locker returns are recorded, system access is revoked, and — the part that matters — a performance note is captured per temporary worker and a rehire list is built before people disperse. A business that rehires a meaningful share of its peak workforce next year trains a fraction of what a business starting fresh does, and the difference shows in the first week of the next peak. The list is the strategy. The rest is logistics.
A peak roster is built for three times the usual headcount, across extended shifts, with a supervisor cohort that is mostly permanent associates promoted for six weeks. Publishing it far enough ahead, keeping break and meal arrangements that scale with the headcount, and running transport at every shift change including nights are the attendance, shift and leave process at its most demanding — and the one most often improvised because the people building it have never done it before. The roster is where the first-week attrition cluster usually starts, and the supervisor briefing before peak is where it is prevented.
The eleven months that are not peak are when the permanent team and the supervisors are developed, the induction is rebuilt as a production line, the roster and transport arrangements are fixed, and the rehire list is contacted two months out. Businesses that treat peak as an event to survive rebuild it from scratch each year; businesses that treat it as the thing the whole year prepares for open with a returning workforce and a supervisor cohort that has been briefed. That preparation, and the records that make it possible, are what HR for e-commerce and D2C work involves. Where a business has just come through a peak like the one in the opening, the honest first step is the review, in the next fortnight, with the daily attrition sheet and the incident report on the table — and e-commerce HR work usually starts there, because the next peak is closer than it feels.
Treat it as a production line: documents before the first shift through a link, a short specific safety induction before floor access recorded per person, role training compressed but not skipped, a buddy on the first shift, same-day activation.
It clusters — one shift, one supervisor — and the causes are rosters not published, breaks not given, transport not running at shift change, or an unbriefed supervisor. Track daily and the cluster shows within a week.
For safety, escalation and induction standard, yes — they are on your floor. For payroll and exit, the agency administers them. Confusing the two is how incidents happen.
Build the rehire list before people disperse, with a performance note and a working contact per person. Rehiring even part of the peak workforce cuts next year's training load substantially.
In the fortnight after, with the attrition sheet and any incident reports. In the new year the detail is gone and the review becomes a summary nobody acts on.
A salesperson who funded three months of travel from his own pocket, a depot that reconciled headcount by phone, and a plant that ran its own rules. How FMCG businesses run HR across three operations that share a payroll deadline and little else.
Read the articleA survey sent to teaching staff during examinations, an appraisal cycle that ignored the term, and administrative staff who felt second-tier. How education institutions run HR on an academic year, and what parity between the three populations actually requires.
Read the articleA head-office HR policy written for the plant, applied to a showroom, resented in the workshop. How automotive groups run people processes across four workforces that share a brand and almost nothing else.
Read the articleIdentify critical compliance gaps, payroll leaks, and hiring bottlenecks with a free 360-degree HR audit. Get a clear roadmap for your business.
Prefer the full picture? Request a free 360-degree HR audit.